Last year was a big year for the Murray Darling. The Darling ran dry, Four Corners exposed upstream water theft thrusting our river into the national spotlight and bickering over the Murray Darling Basin Plan threatened to cut back the amount water that is returned to the environment. With a Victorian State Election and a key decision about the fate of the Murray Darling Basin Plan pending for February, 2018 is shaping up to be even bigger.

ACE Nuclear Free Collective is happy to annouce we will be organising a Radioactive Exposure Tour in 2018. From March 30th to April 8th, we will be travelling from Melbourne to South Australia, to visit nuclear sites including: proposed sites for national nuclear waste dump in Flinders Ranges and Kimba, nuclear bomb test sites at Woomera, Olympic Dam uranium mine and Lake Eyre.

Melbourne keeps growing and is becoming ever more congested and crowded. It is expected that Melbourne will soon pass Sydney as the largest city in Australia. If we want to keep our ‘liveable city’ tag we need to keep improving public transport and services, especially in fringe areas, while ensuring there is sensible and sensitive infill and increased density along key public transport nodes.

It is essential we stop funding major road projects like the North East Link and the Westgate Tunnel. This will free up more than $20B in funding which could be available for more sustainable transport infrastructure.

Environment group Friends of the Earth and community groups across Melbourne's west have expressed outrage this morning in response to the news the Andrews government have signed contracts enabling construction of the Westgate Tunnel Project in early 2018.

"Building the Westgate Tunnel Toll Road is wholly inconsistent with the Andrews government's commitment to action on climate change. The transport emissions from megaroads will blow out any reductions targets. " said Friends of the Earth's Sustainable Cities coordinator Rachel Lynskey.

Melbourne continues investment in roads, at the expense of public transport and a world-class rail network. The community are asking that the government invest in freight on rail to reduce pollution from trucks travelling to the Port of Melbourne.

VicForests is pursuing Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification for the third time in decade. The internationally recognised certification label regards itself as having strict environmental standards, which specify that logging cannot threaten endangered species, old growth forest and rainforest.

Previous audits of VicForests found a number non conformances to the FSC standards. Today our affiliates GECO joined the auditors in the forest to demonstrate VicForests non conformance to the standard and the impacts of logging on threatened wildlife and old growth forest in East Gippsland.

While Jemena carries on with the NT Pipeline construction and the State Government's Inquiry into Unconventional Gas is still underway, communities in the NT are standing up louder than ever against fracking.

As Victorians who continue to feel the relief from our win, we know we haven’t fully won until we have a frack free Australia. In a gesture of support and solidarity, four farmers just traveled over 3000 kms from Victoria to Darwin to rally and stand with communities that are next in line in fighting for land rights, clean water and a safe climate.

Have climate impacts ever been as obvious as they have been over the last few weeks?

This November, Victoria has seen record-late frosts, ocean temperature anomalies, as well as a record-breaking heatwave that delivered 15 days over 30°C.

The state now faces an unprecedented storm that is expected to dump a summers-worth of rain in a matter of days leaving the Bureau of Meteorology saying we're in "uncharted territory."

"Half the inhabitants of Melbourne have probably never seen something like this," Scott Williams, senior forecaster at the Bureau of Meteorology told The Age. "This is a vast intense, high impact event for this state."

This is what climate change looks like.

No one can say any particular weather event is caused by climate change. And, of course, Victoria experiences weather patterns that can be extreme because of natural climate variability. But this extreme weather is consistent with what is forecast under climate change modelling.

Approval of Transurban’s $5.5 billion Westgate Tunnel toll road project locks Melbourne into decades more congestion, tolls and pollution. Local residents in inner west Melbourne will not see relief from traffic and trucks under Transurban’s Westgate Tunnel toll road.

Friends of the Earth acknowledge that we meet and work on the land of the Wurundjeri people and that sovereignty of the land of the Kulin Nation were never ceded. We pay respect to their Elders, past and present, and acknowledge the pivotal role that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people continue to play within the Australian community.